


To find Comfort in Tall Places

by tuesdaycoming



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Spoilers for Rome Arc (Rusty Quill Gaming), heights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27459175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesdaycoming/pseuds/tuesdaycoming
Summary: Sasha sits at the edge of the little railing near the top of the tower and looks out over Upper London, and she is sure that if she falls it won’t be to the ground. The ground is too far away. If she falls it will be into open air, and no one will ever be able to find her.
Relationships: Brock & Sasha Racket, Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam & Sasha Racket, Sasha Racket & Oscar Wilde
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18





	To find Comfort in Tall Places

**Author's Note:**

> This is Rome's doing.

Most of the time it hardly matters that Brock is older. Sasha keeps up. In a lot of things, she’s better than he is, and Brock knows it even if Barrett doesn’t. Brock says Barrett actually does, but if he did, he would say something, Sasha thinks. He would say, “Good job, Sasha.” Or “Nice throw.” The closest he gets is “didn’t see you there,” which he says in the same way he says “go away now,” but sneaking up on Barrett is a tricky thing so it feels to the left of praise. That’s enough, most of the time, especially with Brock in her ear complaining about how much better she is at stuff than him. He smiles when he says it, or he rolls his eyes, and Sasha feels warm, like she’s got new socks on all the time. 

But it matters a lot that Brock is older on nights like this when he’s allowed to go to Upper London on a job Sasha isn’t even considered for. On nights like this, and there are more of them every month seems like, Sasha has to stay in the long room that’s just rows of beds and whining kids who can’t handle themselves yet. Half of them will get weeded out back to the street, and half again will mess up badly enough to get themselves killed by something or other, so they’re not people Sasha can talk to. Or she could, but there’s not much point, so she spends the whole night lying on her back tossing a knife she nicked into the air over her head and catching it before it hits her. A couple times, she misjudges the height and it thunks into the low wood ceiling so she has to get up and pull it out. 

It gets in deep between a crack in the boards in the early hours of the morning. She’s been going at it for long enough to put an awful ache in her shoulder that’ll be hard to hide, but Sasha grits her teeth and ignores it. If she wasn’t focused on that, she would hear the soft padding of boy feet sneaking up behind her. As it is, she only just manages to stifle a shriek when she’s tackled and flung onto the bed. Her hand slips on the knife handle, so instead of a blade it’s her closed fist that thumps between Brock’s shoulder-blades, “Get off me, you stupid idiot,” Sasha shoves at him. He’s heavy, but he’s laughing so he just rolls off and onto his back, crowding her to the edge of the bed. Sasha hits him again on the chest. “Idiot,” she repeats. It would be better if she could do it without grinning. 

“Call me an idiot and expect me to tell you about my secret mission?” Brock whispers just this side of too loud. One of the kids tosses their pillow at them, and hisses to be quiet, which is their loss. Sasha grabs it and stuffs it under her own head to lay next to Brock. She bumps their shoulders together. 

“Can’t get mad for true things, can you?” 

Brock snickers and points up at the knife above them both now, “Gods, Sasha, you that weak you can’t get it out?”

“Shut up” Sasha huffs, folds her arms across her chest, “Just make you get it later, see if I don’t.” Brock keeps quiet. Sasha turns her head to look at him, and he’s already looking back with his eyebrows waggling. “Oh, go on then.” Sasha rolls her eyes. “Don’t shut up, and tell me what it’s like.” 

There isn’t any sun to come rising up while Brock talks to her. It’s the sort of thing that didn’t bother Sasha until he told her about it weeks ago when he came back from a job that went down midday. He said it was brighter than any lantern, brighter than the main market during inspection when they got a mage down to cast lights everywhere. “It was too bright to see in some places,” and Sasha had scoffed at that, had spent an afternoon hiding with a pilfered lantern, staring into the flame for as long as she could stand, until she decided he might not be completely full of shite. 

This time, though, “We had to get these guys into one specific alley, right? So Marin had me climb this huge tower and look down so I could shoot at their feet, crowd them around where we wanted them. Gods, Sasha, it might have been the highest thing in Upper London.” 

“And they just let you climb it?” 

“Had to sneak up there, didn’t I?” 

“What if you fell?” Sasha sits up on her elbows to glare at him, at the very idea. 

“It’d be worth it, honestly.” She hits his chest with an open palm. “Watch it!” Brock knocks Sasha’s elbow out from under her so she falls back down. “It would! You’ll see for yourself, and you’ll agree with me. It’s worth it, alright? Even smells different.” 

“Well what’s it smell like?” Brock shrugs. 

“It’s just different. Like it’s cleaning your nose out or something.” Sasha tries to fit her words around her thoughts, and comes up short. “You’ll like it.” Brock says after a little while, when she almost thinks he’s fallen asleep. Sasha turns to look at his face, but he’s not looking back at her. He’s turned up, staring through the ceiling at something Sasha can’t wrap her head around. 

Later, a year after Brock’s gone missing, and Sasha is sent into Upper London with a ring on her finger and a name she’s supposed to make disappear, she finds the tower and climbs it too. He hadn’t told her about the clock on it, how the huge hand ticking around it would make her head rattle, how it would sound like the end of the world when the hour turned over, but maybe he hadn’t been there long enough to know. 

Sasha sits at the edge of the little railing near the top of the tower and looks out over Upper London, and she is sure that if she falls it won’t be to the ground. The ground is too far away. If she falls it will be into open air, and no one will ever be able to find her. She lets the thought fill her up and puts her shoulders against the railing bars to let her feet dangle. Her stomach swoops, like she’s already falling, but Sasha can’t manage to close her eye, isn’t sure if that would make things better or worse. When she finally scrambles back, the ring is hot around her finger, and Sasha discovers how much easier it is to climb up than to climb back down again. Might have been easier to fall. 

—

Falling is not pleasant at all. The air gets knocked out of Sasha the moment she hits the Paris road, which is almost worse than the pain of falling on debris. Pain, she can work through; air is a bit more necessary. It is worse still, to have someone else fall on top of her. The sharp lines of Bertie’s falcon are pressed into her back through brute force, and it isn’t the pain, it’s never the pain, that’s disappointing when Sasha twists her back around to look at it in the overwrought mirror that hangs in her hotel room. It’s just that she’s sure if she’d ever wanted a scar like this on her body, she could have carved it herself and done a fair hand at it. 

The hotel is taller than anything in either London. It’s crowded with gargoyles and lit up in every direction. Maybe, if she had to climb down the whole thing, Sasha would be scared of falling from it, but it’s just a pop out of the window to get up, and that’s hardly anything. It doesn’t seem quite fair then, that she falls again when she’s so far below it. There’s more time to think than Sasha would like when her arms finally give out above the river so deep below the earth she’s given up any attempts to see the rocks or her hands grasping them. She thinks she might have been right, in that moment, that falling from a height like this doesn’t have an end. But it does. And for a while, Sasha ends too. 

—

“I’ve missed you so much, Sasha.” 

“Yeah.” She probably doesn’t need to be up here. 

“I remember playing in the market. It was called Tag, I think? You were very good.” 

“I was, yeah. Good at hiding, I guess.” The bolts holding the tanks together were just big enough to let her scramble up them. It’s going to be a bigger problem getting down. 

“You were good at hiding! I found you, though, didn’t I?”

“Not all the time. One time I hid in the eel jerky booth, which, wasn’t maybe the best idea cause it did stink something awful, but that meant you wouldn’t come close enough to find me, right? Cause you hated the smell so much.” 

“You stank for a week.”

“Til you dunked me in the river.” The beams that hold everything up down here are wide enough to lay down on if she’s careful. She is. The ceiling is low, made of metal instead of wood, but it’s close. 

“I did? I’m sorry, Sasha.” 

“No,” she shakes her head. “No, it was fun. Yeah? You’ve had fun before. Seem like it anyway. This is sort of all a big joke to you.” 

“It’s fun to talk to you. There isn’t anyone to talk to anymore, expect for Amelie Rose, but she’s gone now.” 

“Yeah.” Sasha can hear her own breath filling up the space between her and the orb that Mr. Ceiling’s voice comes out of. She’s gotten used to the sound of just herself, though it’s hardly ever actually quiet anywhere else. There’s no breath from the orb, just a soft whirring of mechanisms inside it that makes Sasha’s hands itch with a desire to smash it, see what’s inside. She doesn’t, not now. “You were right,” Sasha eventually says.

“What was I right about?” 

“It did smell different. But not there, right? Not on the tower. That didn’t smell like anything really, but when I went home later it smelled. Didn’t know how much it smelled before I went back. Should have dunked the whole place in the river to get it out.” 

“It could be flooded, if that would help.” 

“No!” Sasha sits up, has to brace herself so she doesn’t wobble off the rafter, but it’s only half of why her heart is suddenly racing. “No, that’s not— I didn’t mean you should flood it. How would you even do that? Don’t answer. Don’t— do that. It wouldn’t make me happy.” 

“Oh.” The orb is silent for a moment. “Okay, Sasha.” 

— 

The first time a bolt whizzes part Sasha’s ear and into a man with his sword raised toward her, she knows better than to hope it’s him. Knows better in her brain, but her body reacts the same as it always has, with a swoop to her stomach and a grin flashed over her shoulder. She’s already turned back to finish the arc of the stab into her enemy’s chest, blade slipping through old leather armor and between his ribs, when it catches up to her that it is a bolt, not an arrow sunk into the man, second man, crumbled in front of her. That the smile flashed back had too many teeth. 

That’s alright. It becomes more alright as it happens again, and again, until even though it hasn’t been all that long really, Sasha thinks she might have had more bolts than arrows skating her cheek. That isn’t Brock’s fault. They never were allowed on many jobs together, no matter how much they practiced. Grizzop is good. Better than Brock was, but then, he’s got fancy paladin training so he doesn’t take the breaks Brock did. Doesn’t have time, which is fair, Sasha thinks once they’ve talked about it, but she’d like to take Grizzop onto a roof sometime. Get him up there and have him sit for a while. It’s just, she doesn’t feel up to it in Cairo, and all the roofs they have time for are full of Chimeras in Damascus, and then he’s gone. 

—

Sasha’s never climbed a mountain. Cicero insists it will be good for her to get away from the kids. She thinks he wants an excuse to take a day off himself, and tells him so. He doesn’t deny it, but still, he insists. “It’s just trees, isn’t it,” Sasha sighs after an hour, “Just trees and walking.” 

“Is everything we do not just something else? Tell me, what would you consider to be a singular activity?” Cicero is too happy. Sasha would laugh if she wasn’t bored. 

She thinks for a moment longer than she needs to, but it fills some time. “Fighting beside someone whose good enough to kill you, but you know they never will.” 

“I believe that’s marriage.” 

Sasha snorts, “Gods, no.” 

In some ways, talking to Cicero is like talking to Wilde. Its a game of catch up and twisting words around each other. Cicero’s got the edge on her. Latin and English and gutter French all melt together sometimes, and really, Sasha thinks, as long as he can pretty much understand her they should be fine, but puns are hard. He doesn’t delight in it as much when she finds a good one, but that’s okay. She’s storing them up. 

When the tree line finally breaks, and Sasha can see the valley between mountains, her breath catches, but she doesn’t stop. She waits until they’ve nearly reached the peak and Cicero has his hands on his knees. Thinner air. He waves her on, not speaking for risk of sounding winded. “Come on, keep up,” Sasha grins at him, walking backward for show. “There’s the top, yeah?” She doesn’t wait for him. 

It’s odd, to be at the top of a mountain. It’s a height she can’t fall off of, but it still leaves Sasha dizzy. The wind whips at her clothes, and Sasha laughs into it until she’s crying. Someday she’ll bring the kids up here, tell them to breath deep, let it clear their nose. Behind her, Cicero is plodding up the last few meters. They’ll stand there together while he catches his breath and pretends he can’t see her tears. The sun is bright. When she looks to the west, she can see the smoke rising from the chimney at home.


End file.
